Bolt told he must QUALIFY for 100m at World Championships as Jamaica pick Blake as No 1

Usain Bolt will have to qualify for the 100 metres at this year's World Championships after Jamaican officials decided the country's automatic entry into the race should go to his training partner Yohan Blake

But Bolt was given his country's wildcard entry into the 200m after the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association ruled in his favour for the longer sprint.



The JAAA was forced to choose between its own athletes after the sport's world body ruled that only one wild card would be allowed per country for each event. Jamaica had two runners in each race who were entitled to wild cards.

New rules introduced by the IAAF, athletics' world governing body, last year give defending world champions and winners of the prestigious Diamond League events automatic entry into the World Championships. But if a nation has two eligible candidates, as Jamaica does in both the 100m and 200m, then country's governing body has a tricky decision to make.

Bolt won the 100m Diamond League title but must defer to Blake, 23, over the straight sprint. In turn, Nickel Ashmeade, the 2012 200m Diamond League winner, will see Bolt take the only automatic 200m spot because he is the reigning world champion over the longer distance.

The six-time Olympic champion has been overlooked in the shorter sprint in favour of Blake who took the 100m title in the world championship - Daegu, South Korea two years ago following Bolt's disqualification after a false start.

Bolt will therefore have to run heats on Friday June 20 and contest a semi-final and final on the blue track of Jamaica's National Stadium in Kingston the following day; a stadium built in 1962 that holds 35,000 people paying 500 Jamaican dollars (£3.20) to wear their national colours and make deafening noise on the bleachers or $2000 (£12.80) to sit in the main stand.

Faced with a dilemma over who to choose and who to leave out, the JAAA's President Warren Blake announced its decision on Wednesday.



"The executive of the JAAA has decided that in cases where Jamaica has both the Diamond League champions and the defending (world) champion, it is the defending champion that will get the nod," he said.